In other words, there's never been a better time to be the spy
next door.

The distance between what's possible and what's permissible is
vast and ever-changing. How far can you go?

Q goes Retail

Actually buying the necessary spying tech isn't that complicated,
as long as you have a few hundred dollars to spend. Did you know,
for example, that there's a so-called Spy Store right in downtown
Manhattan?

It also sells a GPS tracker, the MICROtracker, that's only about
2 inches across, making it easy to hide even on a person's body.
The tracker can send text updates about its location throughout
the day. That'll cost you $295.

At one point in the conversation I referred to Leonard's wares as
"listening devices."

"Recorders," he corrected me. "Listening devices sounds
surreptitious. It's a recorder. There's a million
reasons to have a recorder on you and if you're part of the
conversation [being recorded] there's absolutely nothing wrong
with that."

He went on to tell me about a volleyball coach at a local New
York City high school who was verbally abusing the high school
girls on his team. One of the girls recorded him at practice, and
the coach was subsequently fired.

Spy Store has a wide array of recorders, body wires, cameras and
GPSs. But they don't sell computer spyware or other types of
surveillance software for either personal computer or phone,
which is not only harder to use, but also less protected under
the law.

Spy Store also offers customer consultations. "We don't generally
ask questions because that's not our business," said Leonard,
adding that many of these customers are in distress and seeking
help.

"A lot of people come in here and I tell them, the biggest thing
they did was walk through that door, and they had the courage to
do that. And [whatever they have to say] it'll never be something
I haven't heard before, that's for sure."

As is always the case with technology and the law, it's really,
really complicated.

The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and
seizures, but its wording specifies that it's talking about
government agents. The amendment doesn't apply to private
citizens performing the searching and seizing.

Laws pertaining to civilian surveillance vary from state to
state, but in general they're supposed to take into account two
things: a reasonable expectation of privacy, and the intent of
the observer.

That's all well and good in theory, but it's easy to see how in
practice, interpretation of these two strictures can vary widely.

In those cases, it's up to state and federal legislative bodies
to figure out where the line is when it comes to domestic
surveillance.

In Georgia, where Kessler practices law, it's legal to install
"nanny cams," hidden cameras to make sure babysitters are
treating children well, and other cameras to prevent a crime. But
installing cameras to spy on people is not legal.

"So of course everyone always says they were trying to prevent a
crime," Kessler said.

Kessler gave an example: "If my wife is home she doesn't expect
that I'm watching her. But what if I have a nanny cam [set up]
and I happen to see my wife with her boyfriend? That area of the
law is in flux. There are two completing balances: one is my
wife's right to be home and expect that she can do what she wants
privately, versus my right to know what's going on in my house
and if anyone's abusing my children."

In New York state, recording a conversation is legal if one party
consents to it. That means that you can secretly record anything
anyone says to you without their consent or even knowledge.

In California, Texas, Virginia and Minnesota, it's considered a
misdemeanor to place a GPS on someone's car without that
person's permission. Computer surveillance software is a
different issue. In 2010, a Texas man was acquitted for putting
surveillance software on the computer his then-wife was using
during their divorce proceeding.

"If you walk by once and hear something versus if you walk by
every day for a year, that's a very difference. It's what
differentiates domestic violence and stalking from other things.
It's a pattern of behavior."

With technology getting better, cheaper and more available at an
extremely rapid pace, it's almost impossible for regulators to
keep pace. However, "the law is starting to catch up," said Hanni
Fakhoury, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
California-based nonprofit advocate for digital rights. "Policy
makers are starting to realize there's a problem and they need to
take steps…They're mostly focused on [regulating] law
enforcement."

Southworth believes that most electronic surveillance should be
considered illegal under existing law — it's just a matter of
interpreting the law more broadly to encompass the technology
that has arisen since the law was written.

"If you are using spyware to monitor your partner's computer
activities there may not be a specific law that spyware is bad,
but it's illegal to wiretap, it's illegal to eavesdrop."

Fakhoury offers a different perspective.

"Physical stalking laws were really intended to punish physical
acts separate and apart from speech," he said. Digital
stalking is quite different — while a person being digitally
stalked does feel a fear for physical harm or injury, the person
doing the stalking is not physically present and might be acting
solely through speech.

"We need to avoid making faulty analogies that don't actually
work," he said.

Further complicating the issue is the fact that surveillance
equipment can be used for a lot more that secretive
observation. Many companies just choose to market it
that way because it attracts attention, stirs controversy, and
plays into the spies-and-Big-Brother narrative that we've grown
up watching and reading and listening to.

Consider, for example, the GPS
Shoe. As the name suggests, this is a shoe with a GPS tracker
in the sole. But it's not for spying — instead, the shoe is
marketed as a device to help people with Alzheimer's. People with
this neurological disease tend to wander off and then forget
where they are, so the GPS Shoe helps their family members keep
an eye on them.

I know you're no good

Infidelity is the single most cited reason for domestic
surveillance. "It's either heartache or money in any regard,"
Leonard said.

Kessler says he frequently encounters clients who've used illegal
methods to surveil their significant others. "The truth of
the matter is if your spouse is cheating and law tells you it's
illegal to
hack their email, people weigh the costs and decide that it's
worth it."

"My job is to advise clients what the law is and let them make
their own decisions. Yeah, there are times when I think it's
appropriate to put up a camera."

One thing Kessler tells clients, particularly those whose cases
revolve around allegations of domestic abuse, is to carry their
smartphones with them at all times and record video whenever
possible.

Kessler also occasionally recommends that clients consult with
professional surveillance experts or private investigators.

The law prevents Kessler from engaging with illegally obtained
materials.

"I can't be a party to a crime," he explained. "In other
words, if someone comes to me and says I used this spyware on my
computer and found this [evidence], I can't listen to it, I can't
use it. That's always a tough conversation. I know if I say I
can't use it they can fire me and go hire another lawyer and not
tell that lawyer where they got [the evidence] or how they got
it. There's a lot of gray area."

When emotions run high in cases of relationships, infidelity and
heartache, it's easy to see how surveillance devices can be put
to extremely dangerous use. Even when domestic surveillance is
clearly illegal, not all digital privacy invasions are created
equal. Where does a suspicious spouse or lover cross the line
into stalking, harassment and abuse?

In Southworth's experience, the marketing surrounding
surveillance devices influences the way they're used.
Companies that market their products as domestic spying
tools, Southworth said, "are encouraging husbands and boyfriends
to stalk. They've developed software to facilitate crime, and
abusers and stalkers are buying that software to then commit
crimes."

"What's disheartening and really repulsive is the number of apps
and websites that are devoted
to teaching you how to stalk. They don't even pretend
[otherwise]. If you search 'how to stalk your spouse' on the
Internet you'll get hundreds of thousands of responses."

Leonard believes that the majority of his customers surveil for
legitimate, legal reasons. "The reasons people buy this equipment
is usually benign…but on the other hand people don't come in [to
my store] and say 'I'm a gangster' or 'I'm a pervert.'" Leonard
added that the people who use surveillance equipment for
"non-benign" purposes probably wouldn't want to walk into a
store, and are more likely to purchase their tools online.

In today's hyperconnected society, sometimes we
all but invite surveillance. For example, one of Kessler's
former clients, believing her husband was cheating on her, went
into his car and looked at the previous destinations on the
onboard GPS. It turned out the address he'd plugged in the night
before was a hotel — not the place he'd told her he was going.

The client was able to gather digital proof of her husband's
whereabouts without setting up any surveillance equipment — she
used his own digital trail against him.

"It was pretty basic, but pretty smart," Kessler said. "It's sort
of fun seeing how clever people can be."

"A lot of [self-surveillance] is done voluntarily," Fakhoury told
TechNewsDaily. "You check in on foursquare or you upload tons of
pictures. If you take a picture with an iPhone that picture has
your location in it. Now when you upload it to Facebook,
Facebook will scrub it of that metadata, but not every website
does."

But say you've verified all your online privacy settings and
cleaned up your digital data trail as much as possible. What do
you do if you think you're still being spied on? [See also:
Smart Electric Meters Can Spy on Homes ]

Kessler: "If you think [your husband is] reading your emails then
you ought to write an email to a fake boyfriend and say, 'I'll
meet you at Joe's bar tonight at 9 o'clock' and then stake out
Joe's bar and see if your husband shows."

Kessler also recommends that his clients get new cellphones.
"Don't just change your number, change your phone account.
New email, new number, new secret questions." In more
extreme cases, he advises clients to get a professional to sweep
their home for listening devices.

Legally licensed private investigators can perform these sweeps.
Places like Spy Store also offer them. Leonard told me about a
recent sweep he performed on a New York City company's executive
boardroom that turned up multiple devices.

He didn't remove the devices, however. Leonard explained that if
the devices were governmental, then removing them would be an
illegal interference with
government investigations. So instead, he installed a second
hidden camera trained on the original devices' location that
would record anyone who came to retrieve or fix them.

Southworth also points out that digital surveillance devices can
backfire on their owners. "Ironically, the very tech that can be
misused by offenders can also be the best witness when you go to
court...now that we have offenders that are using technology to
facilitate their crimes — there's a beautiful digital trail."

"So I frequently tell abusers if you're going to abuse and stalk
your partners, please do it on some tech platform where we will
have irrefutable digital evidence."